Project: BaneKnight

[Mortis]

The Survivalist Bane Knight

Notes: I am new to the shard. I do not have any secret races available so I opted to make the most formidable character possible given my current constraints. I am not a math person.

Race: Drow Elf

Alignment: Neutral Evil (any evil works)

Reasoning behind race & align selection: I wanted a non-secret race that would give me spell resistance and still meet the humanoid model. I am not a fan of the secret race skins as they have weird bugs with casting animations, armor appearance, and shield / weapon appearance. Alignment was chosen to meet a “feel” for the character. Any evil would work, and for those monk tumble dumpers, you could always go lawful.

The Drow penalty to Con is -3 & Str -1 out of the box, so stats are a bit funny. I wanted a bane knight that could cast 9th spells so that I could extend some of my move favored buffs. Also, I’m after a character that can wear most anything I can get my hands on so I have opted to take rogue at 40 for tumble, pick pocket, pick lock, and UMD dump.

I realize that the strength is the main stay of this build, but in order to meet the needs of a decent con and cha I had to rework a lot of the strength bonuses I could have taken. Once again, with no secret races available, I’m just making due.


Start Stats: Post relog
Str 12 (-1) 11
Con 16 (-3) 13
Dex - -
Wis - -
Int 12 (+2) 14
Cha 14 (+2) 16

LVL Progression
1 – 12 Sorcerer
13 – 24 Black Guard
25 – 31 Sorcerer
32 – 39 Black Guard
40 Rogue (dump)

Lvl 4 +1 Con (14)
Lvl 8 +1 Str (12)
Lvl 12 + 1 Str (13)
Lvl 16 +1 Cha (17)
Lvl 20 +1 Cha (18)
Lvl 24 +1 Cha (19)
Rest Pure Str dump

This is currently under construction so I will let you all know how it fares. As of now I’m pushing a +10 to saves with charisma modifier (buffed) and a 5 +1 per lvl Spell resistance.

Transmutation & Abjuration seem to be the way to go. I have prescribed strictly to the spells Listed in the bane knight guide as class adjusted. This character is highly formidable against most anything I’ve seen yet, and although is slow in the start, moves very fast after auto-still 1 - 3.

Please give feedback, I’m new and could use it.

Thanks,
mlobriant

[sabregirl]

I wouldn't build a bane knight with a drow You'll end up with not enough str to hit anything and no you won't survive I don't really recommend building one without at least a secret subrace as the stats you need for them are difficult to get to work otherwise. Also using elf will net you an XP penalty in legendary levels.

If I were going to use a non-secret subrace, I'd probably go with Yuan-Ti. Or if you didn't mind the XP pen, aquatic elf or wood elf.
You don't really need more than 10 int, just discipline and concentration. You're also not going to get evasion from 1 rogue, you need two for that and 2 levels not sorc or BG is too much for a BK, stick with monk if you're going to go for evasion you don't need UMD really as you have sorc levels and can read arcane spells. Getting lvl 9 spells is something I did on my two bane knights though I gave up a BG bonus feat to do it (though BG bonus feats are awful after the first 2 )

I think trying to get lvl 9 spells on a non secret subrace is really tough and probably not a good idea. If you're sticking with this character you probably need to drop the idea and put everything you have in str to be able to hit anything.

-S

[Bakchuda]

Another reason level 9 spells are not hard to drop is that there are not many useful ones to cast. A bane knight does not have the DC to land any of the damage or save-based spells, and the crushing hand has the same grapple check as the level 7 spell.

[chainlink]

65 sr is not as much as it sounds, you'll be fine in non-LL areas but when you get to the Ssithraks and the desert you'll find they poke through your sr with monotonous regularity and of course you'll be doing your leveling post 40 with significantly less than 65 for a long time. For an up-front melee toon the -5 Con penalty is really too much to take especially when it hurts your primary stat (Str) to boost this. I'd suggest building something more easy to play to 60 and wait for a decent secret/UR/BUR subby to come your way before trying a Bane Knight. Unless you play an awful lot I suspect you're really going to feel you've wasted your time when you get past level 40 and find your ab sucks in a big way.

[dodrudon]

They're cruel aren't they? That's okay, I got my very first build shot to pieces too.....

[sabregirl]

However, I will say for the crushing hand is there are a number of nasty critters that can only be grappled with the lvl 9 version. Though these critters are only in the hardest areas of the mod.

To make the bane knight grabs effective on a lot of critters you need spell penetration feats to beat SR anyway and to fit all those feats you probably need an UR or BUR race. So other than metamagic (and my bane knight only rarely uses those slots for metamagic) there's not much reason for this particular build to have lvl 9 spells.

-S

[Yomi]

chainlink said:

65 sr is not as much as it sounds

To expand on this, I believe the desert windtalkers have a spell penetration of 56. If you have a race with SR lvl+15 like Raksasha you'll have an SR of 75 when you hit 60. You aren't immune, but it's very nice, cutting down their chances of implosion to only 10% times your fort save, or about 1/200 assuming a high save. With an SR 10+lvl race you hit SR70 at level 60. This is the same as having a spellward ring up all the time. It's certainly nice as only 35% of their implosions get through, but you're by no means invulnerable, and most of your levelling it'll be worse. With SR 5+lvl you will find your SR to be non-existant until you hit level 53. By the time you hit level 60 you'll be stopping their spells 40% of the time. Well, it's better than nothing but realistically isn't going to make a big difference. I'd much rather have better stats.

Put another way, my impression is that SR 15+lvl means you have useful and noticible SR for areas appropriate to your level. With SR 10+lvl you have pretty low SR for level appropriate areas, but wow it's great for those places you were running through 10 levels ago. With SR 5+lvl you have very little SR in level appropriate areas.


I find UMD pretty handy earlier in the game (not necessary but pretty nice especially if you don't have banks full of rare items to choose from). But your build doesn't get UMD until level 40, so can't take advantage of this. I have not felt that 43 or so UMD gained me much in LL's unless I was able to keep putting points into it (e.g. bard, rogue, or assassin control class) -- most of the nice items either aren't restricted, are non-UMDable, or require a lot more UMD to use. If you do want to go rogue, consider 2 rogue levels to at least gain evasion. Or just do 1 monk level at 40.

For race, I'd work hard on trying to get prismatic HD. You could look at HD - Blue as a non-secret choice, but really the Prismatic is a great one to use for Baneknights. Even the UR races don't make really compelling arguments in favor of using (maybe FA), with only a few BUR races obviously superior.

And of course study the other bane knight builds people have posted along with the comments they've received. HGWiki has an excellent Index of Baneknight builds with links to their pages.

[setekhi]

To further clarify the drow issues, you get -3 con on top of the elf ability score modifiers. So in the end, you do get -5 to con. So if you put as many points as it takes a human to get 15 con you'll have 10, which I don't think I would ever play a tank with. For an elf you actually have to put an 18 into con to get it to show 16 during character creation, which is a huge investment considering you still end up spending 3 extra stat points that just make for an odd number in the end and you only have a +1 modifier.

Regarding the secret subraces and models with messed up animations, those "issues" only come up with non-dynamic models. The secret subraces people are telling you to play a Bane Knight with are prismatic half-dragon (which is just a human model that has wings), and Fallen Angel (different wings). Though to be honest I don't think I'd build it with FA, but that's totally beside the point.

Something I learned when I was getting used to building characters for HG is that you really should minimize your intelligence score. Extra skill points don't do anyone any good; I like to see that I have "just enough" and then put the extra intelligence points into con or something if possible, otherwise some other ability score like wisdom that I want to influence my saves with. But anyways for a tank that wants to be in the front line the whole time, you need a lot of hp; Tenser's helps but your base con is still important, as you will take damage and need to heal back up to your regular maximum. Put con at 14 (at least) for any tank. But as for dropping your intelligence score, this involves deciding which skills you "need."

Essentially, as a tank you'll need Concentration, Discipline, and Tumble, and not much else. It's true, if you're taking UMD, it needs to be a class skill for your control class, or after you get past level 40, you still won't be able to UMD any good gear. There also doesn't seem to be that much that a tank would want to wear that they couldn't anyways. Many builds will take UMD, but that's for strength builds that have no spellcasting at all, so that they can read utility scrolls such as Greater Sanctuary or Black Blade of Disaster, etc.

To sum up, drow don't make for tanks, and tanks don't need 9th level spell slots. To work out how good a build really is, you will need to do a little arithmetic to decide how it'll all come together at level 60. Otherwise you could end up regretting some old mistakes.

[thedomicron]

i hope that you don't get discouraged by the comments you're getting about your proposed build.

at first i was frustrated w/ why my builds weren't very successful, until i realized that in order to design your own successful build (my definition of a successful build is one which can function very well at its designed function. for instance my str tank is a huge success because it can function for where it was designed to [dustbone] and elsewhere). the key to creating a good build is knowing enemies and how to combat them.

you'll find the vets have very deep knowledge of most of the enemies (or compile it if they don't) so that they know how to shore up their weaknesses.

i really suggest that you pick one of the cookie cutter builds in order to familiarize yourself with most of the legendary areas on this server.

whatever you decide to do, good luck man, i'd offer some advice if i knew anything about bane knights